


Blood and Memory

by Serie11



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, Game: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Gen, Missing Scene, Nobodies Are Weird, Nobodies Aren't Human, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Riku (Kingdom Hearts), and namine is less than a nobody, tentative friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 13:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20026642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: Riku realises that Naminé is less human than he thought, and Naminé finds out just how human Riku is.





	Blood and Memory

Riku storms away from the underground computer room, seething quietly. He’d _done _DiZ’s stupid task – he’d gone and investigated the world, obedient as ever, and had idiotically gotten stuck in a place where he hadn’t been able to leave. So he’d been forced to hide in the back of a pantry for three hours until he’d found an opportunity to escape. And DiZ wanted him to go out on _another _mission, right now? Maybe if it wasn’t one of the worst days DiZ could ask he would have agreed, but Riku is in pain and wants to go to sleep as soon as possible, so he’d snapped at the man, telling him that he wasn’t going out again today. DiZ hadn’t been pleased with that, but he’s never pleased, with anything. But he’d backed off, at least, though he’d dealt out a scathing comment that still has Riku’s cheeks burning.

Riku can’t bring himself to regret it, though. Frustration has been building up in his chest lately, and he seems to have a way to vent all of it except the bits that come from DiZ himself. Yelling at him had felt good. 

_Sora_. He goes and checks on Sora at least once a day, usually before he retires to his room. It puts his mind at ease, and lets him sleep. Reminds him of why he’s doing this. Sometimes when he’s standing in front of DiZ, holding his tongue, it’s hard to remember. Seeing that Sora is still under DiZ’s power helps his self-control. He needs to be in DiZ’s good books. He doesn’t know what he’d do if DiZ refused him entry to the mansion, and refused to let him see Sora. 

He pushes the basement door open carefully, as if a noise could wake Sora. He’d checked on Donald and Goofy on the way here, but seeing Sora is the thing that keeps him sane.

Naminé is standing in front of Sora’s pod, carefully tapping away on the control panel. Riku walks over to stand next to her, looking at the graphs and numbers rolling past on the screen.

“You’re back,” Naminé says quietly, tapping.

“Yeah,” Riku says. “Dead end. No sign of the Organisation, and nothing else of interest to DiZ either. Then he wanted to send me out again.” He can’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“You’re here, though. You don’t normally say no to him,” Naminé comments, flicking her eyes up to look at him for a few seconds before returning her focus to the control panel. Riku thinks that he knows her well enough by now to recognise her curiosity.

“Hmph,” Riku mutters. “Well, normally…”

Naminé pauses, and looks at him properly. “Normally? Is something not normal?”

There’s a touch of fear to her voice, and Riku knows that for her, anything out of the norm means something bad is going to happen.

“It’s fine,” he reassures her. “Just… you know.”

Naminé eyes him for a few seconds, hands hovering over the control panel but no longer concentrating on it. “No, I don’t think I do.”

Riku looks away. He – doesn’t Naminé already know? “I thought… don’t you have Kairi and Sora’s memories?”

“I wasn’t born like other Nobodies,” Naminé admits. “You know that. Sora has Roxas, and Kairi is safe on the islands, complete without needing me. I’m just a by-product. I can see Sora’s memories, and touch the memories of those connected with him, but they’re not _my _memories. I’m separate from all of them.”

Riku twists his lips. Sora can be such a _boy _sometimes. Even though he knows about Riku – helped to pick out his new name – he wouldn’t have ever thought it through this far. He clears his throat awkwardly, resists the urge to scratch his head.

“Just cramps,” Riku says. “With – you know,” he says again, waving his hand towards the general area, still awkward. He really shouldn’t have started this conversation with her, but they’re having it now so he’s just going to bluster through and pretend that he’s fine with it.

“Oh,” Naminé says, understanding clearing her expression. “Yes, I – I have enough of Kairi in me to know about that. Even if I’ve never experienced it for myself.”

“Never?” Riku asks, curious despite himself.

Naminé tilts her head slightly. “As I said, I’m just a by-product of Sora. I can’t bleed, no matter what happens to me.” She ducks her head, and Riku remembers dark bruises on her arms after she came here from Castle Oblivion. Evidence of her treatment there. But there hadn’t been any scratches on her arms. Uneasy, Riku shifts his weight between his feet. He’d known that Naminé was a Nobody, but he’d still thought of her as… well, just as another person. She isn’t mindless like the lesser Nobodies, and he has emotions, unlike the higher Nobodies. But if she doesn’t bleed… then she doesn’t have blood. He’s never seen her eat, but he’s away from the mansion most days, and when he gets back he often just crashes in his room. He’d just thought… that maybe he’d missed it. But if he’d missed that, what other, larger things could he had missed as well? Just who is he trusting to take care of Sora? He still doesn’t know who DiZ is, and now Naminé…

“Oh,” he says. It’s too small of a word that falls in between them, only showing how big the silence is instead of filling it. “I didn’t know.”

Naminé looks at him silently. He catches her eyes; are they too blue, or is it just the light?

Naminé turns back to the control panel, back to her work. Riku keeps looking at her – seeing how the soft blue of the area reflects off her skin, seeps into it, colouring it. He doesn’t remember the sheer amount of times that he’s watched her draw, hues sketched across the pages. He’d never thought that the room she was in could colour her back in turn.

Stomach tight and painful, and his head stuffed full of too many troubling thoughts, Riku turns back to Sora. Like always, the boy is drifting in his dreams, eyes closed and expression peaceful. Riku drinks in the planes of his face, how his hair floats. Riku can do nothing – nothing to help him, except do DiZ’s dirty work, and hope that DiZ doesn’t find an end to his usefulness.

“What have we come to?” he asks Sora quietly. Sora, as always, doesn’t reply. Doesn’t twitch or move at all, just floats quietly, sleeping.

“He’ll be awake sooner than you think,” Naminé murmurs. Riku tenses his jaw and doesn’t look at her. It won’t be soon – it’s probably still months to wait, months of watching Sora’s still, lifeless face.

“Tell me if anything changes,” Riku says brusquely, turning to leave the room. He’s tired and dirty and he needs to go and have a shower to wash all the blood off of him. If only potions doubled as painkillers. Instead, it’s an early night. He’ll need the energy for tomorrow, if he’s going to go out and complete the next dreary task that DiZ has for him.

Shoulders stooped under the heavy weight that follows him, Riku goes.

**Author's Note:**

> FINALLY gotten around to writing a fic where Riku talks about being trans... just know that even if it isn't mentioned, Riku is trans in every fic I write, thank you for your consideration


End file.
